Does the Bible contain hidden codes that tell the future? Can the use of computers now reveal mysteries that God has hidden in the ancient Hebrew scriptures for centuries which speak of events such as September 11th, Armageddon, the War in Iraq or the rise of the Antichrist?
These are questions which have generated sales in recent years for books by popular authors claiming a definitive "YES" answer to all of the above.
So what are we to make of the "Bible Codes"??
The following is an excerpt on this very topic from the newly-released Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times by Zondervan. This is one of the best non-technical resources in print on the subject of eschatology and prophecy. (In fact, my only criticism of the DBPET is that the entries are a bit too short in some places):
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Bible Codes
In 1997 Simon and Schuster published a startling book by reporter Michael Drosnin entitled The Bible Code. In this book Drosnin claimed there was a special letter sequence code hidden in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament that could now be unlocked with the use of computers. Furthermore, he argued that this code contained predictions of dozens of significant modern people and events, including President Clinton, Watergate, the 1929 stock market crash, the Apollo moon landings, Adolph Hitler, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and numerous others. Drosnin’s book became an immediate bestseller.
However, biblical Hebrew scholars reflecting a wide range of theological positions, along with numerous mathematicians, studied Drosnin’s Bible Code and concluded that his arguments were not valid and that there was no special letter sequencing code in the Hebrew Bible. Perhaps the most thorough and most devastating critique of this theory is Randall Ingermanson’s 1999 book, Who Wrote the Bible Code? A Physicist Probes the Current Controversy.
In spite of this scholarly consensus, Drosnin soon followed up on his first book with a sequel, Bible Code II: The Countdown, and the idea of a Bible Code continues to flourish in some quarters of the popular imagination. Indeed, numerous books on this subject have appeared and continue to be popular. Likewise, several websites on this topic have appeared. What exactly is the “code,” and what should Christians make of it? Does it contain hidden prophecies? And how does the “code” work?
Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS)
Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS) is the system propagated by Drosnin in The Bible Code. First, the entire Hebrew Bible (or occasionally just the Pentateuch, depending on the researcher) is loaded into a computer. All spaces between the words are ignored, and the computer thus generates a long continuous stream of consecutive letters. The operators tell the computer to look for words or patterns of words by selecting equidistant letters. First the computer looks at every other letter. Then it looks at every third letter, every fourth letter, every fifth letter, and so forth, until it is looking at letters spaced thousands of letters apart. The computer then looks at the sequences that it has produced and tries to find matches with the words the operators are searching for.
For a small, simple example of how ELS works, consider a short biblical passage. Numbers 4:3 reads: “Count all the men from thirty to fifty years of age who come to serve in the work in the tent of meeting.” Now suppose that a “researcher” wants to employ ELS and find out if this text (in English) says anything in code about cats. The first step is to remove all of the spaces between the words, thus yielding:
Countallthemenfromthirtytofiftyyearsofagewhocometoserveintheworkinthetentofmeeting
Next the researcher (or computer) will look at every other letter, then every third letter, fourth letter, and so on, until they find cat. Lo and behold, in Numbers 4:3 one does find cat, encoded with a 32-letter spacing! Starting with the c in count, skip over 32 letters and arrive at a in years, followed by a 32-letter skip to t in the. The results are shown below in bold:
CountallthemenfromthirtytofiftyyeArsofagewhocometoserveintheworkinThetentofmeeting
This is ELS or equidistant letter sequencing. Each letter is separated by the exact same number of letters (in this case 32). Of course three-letter words are easy to find. This one could be found without a computer in about 10 minutes. Longer words are more difficult to find, but if one searches a large enough text with the aid of a computer, even large words can be discovered fairly easily.
In one of Drosnin’s famous examples, the computer was told to search for the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.18 This is a twelve-letter sequence, not an easy one to find. Fortunately computers can handle such challenges. Indeed, the computer did find a sequence containing the name Yitzhak Rabin. The first letter in his name occurs in Deuteronomy 2:33. The computer then skips 4722 letters to find the next letter in his name in 4:42, followed by another skip of 4722 to 7:20, and so forth, skipping 4722 letters each time until reaching the last letter in 24:16.
However, it is not the mere occurrence of the encoded name that convinces the ELS code proponents. It is the presence of other additional connecting or predicting aspects in the near vicinity of the texts that are intercepted by the letters of the name. Thus in Drosnin’s example, the second letter of Yitzhak Rabin’s name shows up in Deuteronomy 4:42. This verse, Drosnin points out dramatically, contains the phrase “the assassin will assassinate” and thus predicted the assassination of the Israeli prime minister thousands of years before it happened. Impressed? (Note: Drosnin has translated 4:41–42 rather poorly. The NIV text reads, “Then Moses set aside three cities east of the Jordan, to which anyone who had killed a person could flee if he had unintentionally killed his neighbor without malice aforethought.” The text deals with cities of refuge for those who kill someone unintentionally; it has nothing to do with assassination.)
So how should one assess Drosnin’s Bible Code? Drosnin’s equidistant letter sequence (ELS) theory smacks of the current cultural infatuation with computers and technology and the postmodern desire for mysticism. The consensus view of respected biblical scholarship is that there is nothing other than coincidence behind Drosnin’s (and others) secret messages that they find hidden in the Bible with ELS. The scholarly rebuttals to the Bible Code have been devastating and have provided strong evidence that there is nothing mystical, prophetic, or divine about the ELS Bible Code.
Analysis of ELS
The arguments leveled against the ELS Bible Code fall into two basic categories—one relating to probability and the other relating to textual variations.
Probability. The most important argument of Drosnin (and others) is that the patterns they have found are incredibly beyond normal probability and are therefore divine in nature. They cite incredible odds against names and connections appearing in the text with equidistant spacing merely by chance. This is the critical defense for the Bible Code.
However, this argument has been pretty well shattered by those who have critiqued the code. Large texts with several hundred thousand letters present billions of ELS options. One scholar, for example, points out that, assuming equal letter distribution, the chance of randomly selecting a six-letter word (with a twenty-two letter alphabet, as Hebrew has) is 1 in 110,000,000. This seems incredible, and the ELS proponents cite these fantastic odds as the certification of their method. However, as this scholar notes, the Pentateuch by itself contains over 300,000 letters. Based on ELS methodology, names can be read forward or backward and the skip sequence can range from 2 to around 30,000. Under these criteria the 300,000-letter Pentateuch yields 18 billion six-letter combinations.
Thus using an ELS computer search, any random six-letter name or other letter combination will show up in the Pentateuch around 160 times (18 billion divided by 110,000,000).19 With 160 options it should not be hard to find one that intersects a verse that can be loosely connected to the name, especially if the imagination is used (or poor translation techniques, as Drosnin is prone to do).
Underscoring this reality has been the results of ELS searches run on nonbiblical literature. Any literary work of significant length will yield hundreds of modern names with hundreds of different associations in adjacent phrases. One research team, for example, loaded the English text of Moby Dick into their computer and ran ELS searches through this classic work to look for “predictions” about assassinations of other twentieth-century leaders. They found numerous names with significant connections to the topic of death in the nearby texts. For example, the name Samoza (president of Nicaragua, assassinated in 1956) showed up intersecting near the words “he was shot,” “dies,” and “gun.” This example is similar to Drosnin’s Yitzhak Rabin example. Unless we view Moby Dick as divinely inspired, this evidence demolishes the argument behind the Bible Code.
Textual variations. Another flaw in the ELS approach is that its proponents seem completely unaware of variations in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. The Bible was transmitted for many years through handwritten manuscripts. Because of the mammoth size of the Old Testament and the difficulties involved in hand copying, there are no two hand-written ancient Hebrew manuscripts that are exactly alike—that is, identical down to the very letter.
For one thing, spelling was not standardized during the production and during the early transmission of the Old Testament. Numerous words had two different spelling options, and the ancient manuscripts varied frequently in their spelling. Indeed, after the return of the Jews following the Babylonian captivity, the scribes not only changed the letter style from the old angular Hebrew in which it was written to the newer square Aramaic letters (as used in Hebrew Bibles today), but they also frequently inserted consonantal vowels, additional letters inserted into the spelling of words in order to help with reading and pronunciation. So the specific letter length of the Hebrew Old Testament was never uniform or fixed.
This is a critical problem for a method that searches for names with letters spaced apart by thousands of letters. Remember that Drosnin’s example of Yitzhak Rabin has a letter spacing of 4772 letters for each letter. It extends through twenty-two chapters of Deuteronomy. If one letter is missing or if one extra letter is added, the system collapses. Drosnin used an edition of the Hebrew Bible called the Second Rabbinic Bible. This edition of the Hebrew Bible was the standard (but not universal) printed Hebrew text from the sixteenth century until the early twentieth century. The Second Rabbinic Bible was based on earlier printed Hebrew Bibles and on late medieval manuscripts. None of the earlier printed editions are exactly the same in letter length as the Second Rabbinic Bible.
Likewise, hand-written manuscripts that predate the Second Rabbinic Bible by hundreds of years, such as the Leningrad Codex (the oldest complete hand-written Hebrew Bible), differ in numerous ways—ways that are minor or insignificant in regard to meaning but major and critical in regard to counting letter spacing. Likewise, most twentieth-century editions of the Hebrew Bible are based on older manuscripts like the Leningrad Codex. So contemporary editions of the Hebrew Bible differ from the Second Rabbinic Bible in the number of letters that appear. We do not know of any Christian scholar today who uses the Second Rabbinic Bible as a Hebrew text.
For example, the modern edition referred to as Biblia Hebraica, which was also available to Drosnin in electronic form, differs from the Second Rabbinic Bible by forty-one letters in Deuteronomy alone! Thus Drosnin’s Yitzhak Rabin “prediction” does not appear in any modern Hebrew Bible editions, nor does it appear in any of the ancient handwritten manuscripts. In each edition of the Hebrew Bible and in each ancient manuscript, the computer will find a completely different set of encoded names and “predictions.” Thus to argue for the validity of one particular set of supposedly encoded names from one specific edition of the Hebrew Bible seems arbitrary. Drosnin reveals a total ignorance of the current textual situation of the Hebrew Bible when he writes, “Every Hebrew Bible that now exists is the same, letter for letter.” His statement is simply not true.
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Despite the popularity of the Bible Code, actual Biblical scholarship reveals the numerous flaws in the foundational claims of such approaches. Yet few people in the general public are aware of these flaws, thus the claims of Code proponents seem spectacular and astoundingly accurate. But even a basic understanding of the Hebrew Bible and its history, composition and transcription is enough to place the "Bible Code" into the same pop-theology dustbin as bent spoons or the Da Vinci Code.
Comments
Isaac Newton, a very smart man, believed in Bible codes too (not to mention alchemy). He spent years looking for them. It was all a waste of time too and the work he did on them has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of history.
So why do even smart people buy into such nonsense? Partly it's due to the problem of faith itself. Faith in intangibles is hard to test and regarding a belief as an absolute corrupts reason. It's a rare person indeed who applies the tools of reason to the core assumptions of their beliefs. Men of Newton's time had little reason to examine them anyway. The evidence available at the time fit comfortably within the assumption of a divine clockmaker being behind what looked like a clockwork universe.
That's no longer the case. The evidence no longer demands a supernatural explanation for the existance of the universe. To turn away from examining core assumptions now is inexcusable & if you believe nonsense, it's not hard to see why nonsense is the result.
Bible Codes are a modern illiterate excuse to avoid talking about Gematria.
It seems that with so many interpretations of the Bible out there, not to mention the missing / destroyed parts, that none of this would be plausible to begin with.
Kristen, if you're talking about manuscript variants then I agree.
Mag777, Gematria is a fun topic. Perhaps it would make for a good follow up article...
Hugh, you said "regarding a belief as an absolute corrupts reason", but this isn't true because you're assuming an absolute in order to make your point (that is, the absolute that belief in an absolute corrupts reason). Absolute belief isn't the problem...it's the object of one's belief that determines whether or not it corrupts reason. Newton committed a basic fallacy which led to his bogus musings on Scripture--he approached it as a mathematician approaching a problem with hidden solutions. But this is as illegitimate as approaching calculus as Ancient Near East literature. Experts are only experts when they are in their field of expertise.
Article places more trust in countering the biblical evidence, when in fact "Torah" is found in ELS form in ALL 5 books of Moses, however let's examine what's clearly stated in the Bible on the basic subject:
"Declaring the end from the beginning, & from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, & I will do all my pleasure:" Isaiah 46:10
"I have declared the former things from the beginning; & they went forth out of my mouth, & I shewed them; I did them suddenly, & they came to pass." Isaiah 48:3
"But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, & maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, & the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these;" Daniel 2:28
"He revealeth the deep & secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, & the light dwelleth with him." Daniel 2:22
"Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" Amos 3:7
Q: Then
Joe - did your comment get cut off? I'm not really sure what point you were making. Are you saying the Bible itself addresses the subject of ELS?
Mark,
Had a little extra to say which didn't appear... Cyrus in the book of Isaiah is mentioned by name approx. 150 years before his birth... the relevance of those scriptures posted is that G-d tells us that he has done from the beginning of time that which is to occur at a later time... the foundation for prophecy. I mentioned the appearance of the word "Torah" in the books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as part of an ELS with a specific pattern to the sequence. Also, the book of Esther received much criticism from a Christian scholar (Martin Luther) because it didn't provide the name of G-d specifically, yet there is an series of ELS's found in the book that references "Mashiach", which in hebrew means Messiah or the equivalent to Christ in greek. A good source for investigating this info. is Chuck Missler (khouse.com)... the scriptures within themselves indicate that G-d is in control of time as we know it, ex. book of Joshua. Also, look into PaRDeS.
Thanks, Joe. For the record, I'm an evangelical who takes seriously the message, inspiration and authority of Scripture. That being said, I see multiple problems with ELS telling us anything about said message, inspiration and authority. First, ELS most likely assumes a specific book order of the Bible and it assumes the totality of the books from the Hebrew Bible. That means the Holy Spirit was inspiring "coding" that would not have been apparent to the original readers. This already violates a basic tenet of inspiration/interpretation. The text cannot mean to us what it never meant to the original audience. (If it can mean something different to us, then we really have no objective canon for interpretation)
Second - and what I think is the most dangerous aspect of ELS, is that the idea of a buried "code" suggests hidden knowledge that only people with certain resources or abilities can access. This sounds suspiciously like gnostic doctrine. [CONT...]
[...CONT] Now granted, I don't think anyone is suggesting that bible codes are necessary for salvation - but I'm not comfortable with the whole idea of hidden knowledge (especially knowledge the original audience would have been completely unaware of) in the Bible. Too gnostic for me.
Something else that just occurred to me. Bible codes are messages that are COMPLETELY detached from any sort of meaningful context. Not even using ELS, I was able to find the phrase "there is no God" numerous times in my Bible. What am I to make of that? Is this a meaningful message? I would like to know what your honest answer to that question would be. There's an obvious answer, but I wonder if you apply the answer of context to so-called messages found using ELS?
Mark, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the topic. As for the issue of a specific book order of the Hebrew Bible & the Holy Spirit inspiring "coding" not apparent to the original readers, here are some concepts found in the scriptures that support a multi-level understanding of the Word of G-d... 1)He created the end from the beginning, therefore it's content would be all inclusive. 2)the first five books (Torah / Old Testament)were in a specific order & were the foundation of the nation that G-d was calling to Himself. As for the text having a "different" meaning depending on the audience... recall that in Daniel 12:8-9, Daniel is told after revelation is given to him not to worry about the interpretation for it is meant for the time of the end. The idea of an "objective canon for interpretation" maintains integrity thru it's literal meaning.
As for a hidden code, here's Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter
You stated, "I don't think anyone is suggesting that bible codes are necessary for salvation". Agreed, in fact in John 3:5,
Yeshua (Jesus) answers Nicodemus by saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The context of this conversation was that Nicodemus being a "Master of Israel" did not have certain understanding of the Word of G-d, Yeshua's response gives us a preview of the levels of understanding...
"If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" John 3:12
Don't look at it as gnostic, reason being that Yeshua (Jesus) acknowledges Nicodemus' expertise among men, it is the knowledge that is revealed by G-d that surpasses it. And here is the difficulty with the Bible Codes, what are men trying to use it for? I see it associated with prognosticators & "ancient cultures" (Mayans were post 1 century A.D.), that's not it's intent.
You stated that Bible codes are "COMPLETELY" detached from meaningful context, key word meaningful... John 3:12 remains relevant. Again, what is being done with the info. being found using the ELS, is it a tool to witness the awesomeness of the G-d of Israel or is it being used for worldly purposes. Discernment is still necessary. Context is important, as mentioned in an earlier post, Mashiach (Messiah / Christ) is found in an ELS in the book of Ester, where a claim of no G-d mentioned was made against the book. Even the reported Isaac Rabin ELS, his name being written in the Bible on a different level of understanding brings up Malachi 3:16, "Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name." We know from the scriptures there are books in Heaven, is admission into the Kingdom of G-d a requirement for this revelation?!
Joe, I'm afraid you're using verses out of their context to appeal to a kabbalistic approach to Scripture. ELS generates excitement...but only among people who do not have expertise in the manuscript transmission of the Hebrew Bible. It relies upon medieval copies of Torah or the rest of Tanakh which happen to work with ELS, but ignores those manuscripts which do not. Every student of the Hebrew Bible knows that things like defective spelling, text-critical issues and variant readings are present throughout the text (for instance, there are many places in Hosea where the original wording is unsure due to manuscript degradation). If just ONE letter is off in a manuscript, the ELS system being used doesn't work.
ELS is a testament to man's ingenuity and superstition, not God's prophetic revelation of His Word.
It's also interesting that God would choose to only "encode" such messages in the Hebrew Scriptures and not in the New Testament.
James-Michael,
If the scriptures are out of context as you indicate, then what does it mean when scriptures indicate that "G-d declared the end from the beginning"... and what was meant by "the things of heaven" in John 3:12?
As for, "It's also interesting that God would choose to only "encode" such messages in the Hebrew Scriptures and not in the New Testament."
Zephaniah 3:9 may provide an answer...
"For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent."
You reference kabbala & superstition in your refute, yet we know that numbers such as 3, 7, 40, 50, 70, construction dimensions and other mathematical references in the Bible are of importance... how then would you say that G-d would not use a highly mathematical instrument to construct and convey information. If it's human ingenuity as stated, who do we get it from? Btw, I don't adhere to kabbalistic ideology.
I don't understand why ELS is the only pattern that is considered. There *are* other patterns. What about skipping 1 letter, then 2, then 3, etc. Or skipping 10 then 20 then 30? There are almost an infinite number of patterns that could be used. So why ELS? Does the Bible self-support the idea that ELS should be the defining pattern used for coding? If it does not (and I'm claiming that it in fact does not) - then this is akin to shooting an arrow and then drawing a target around it after it hits the wall. In order to score a bullseye, you have to call your shot. That's what prophecy does in many places in the Bible. It calls its shot, and then hits it...with deadly accuracy. But ELS does not do this.
Mark, I hear what you are saying, but then how do you explain the ELS's which are found in the Hebrew scriptures, whether of Medieval dating or not (good for topic on Hebrew scribes). ELS is not the only identified form of concealed information... there is what is referred to as PaRDeS (Peshat, Remez, Derash, & Sod) which constitute 4 forms of interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures, under Sod (that which is concealed)you have what are called Macro-codes in addition to ELS's. However, if you want to take a look at a rather plain view ELS of sorts in your bible, go to Psalm 119, most will have the Hebrew alphabet over the 22 paragraphs... reason for that is because as written in original hebrew each of those paragraphs would start by using that very same letter represented. Consider the questions I posted previously, especially now during these times of highly encrypted technology, where does this come from?
Hi Joe - "but then how do you explain the ELS's which are found in the Hebrew scriptures" - I explain them as pure chance. I explain them the exact same way I explain negative message ELS that are found. I guess that's what I'm not understanding. There is nothing in the Scriptures that says that there are hidden encoded messages, and there's certainly not anything in the Scriptures that says the messages are encoded by ELS. It just looks to me like you are finding a positive message, and saying that God put it there. But when a negative message is found using the exact same method, you are dismissing it as evil intentions of man. There doesn't seem to be any consistency in your recognition of messages found using ELS.
I also don't understand what Psalm 119 has to do with it. Psalm 119 is an acrostic. And it's not hidden. If you look at the Hebrew it's painfully apparent that the writer was using each letter of the Hebrew alphabet to start each line of each section.
[CONT...]
[...CONT]
And the letters don't even spell out a message - they're simply arranged in alphabet order. This is a common form of poetry...
A poem for the one I love
Because I love you so much
Can you see how much I love you? Etc...
I can respect the intensity that you seem to have for this issue. But I'll just have to respectfully disagree with you on whether or not there are hidden messages encoded in Scripture. I would rather spend time exploring the truths of Scripture and digging for the meanings of Scripture - that I can actually read. I want to know what the original audience heard and thought, and what it meant to them. I can't see spending time searching for hidden codes that the original audience, most of whom only heard the Scriptures - would not have even remotely been aware of. God bless.
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